I’m a cynical guy, so when FiringSquad tells me about Microsoft’s worldwide competition to find the best student-designed videogame based on the theme of global warming, all sorts of alarm bells start ringing in my head. Aside from the fact that global warming is the latest vogue bit of fashionable scaremongering since the “everything causes cancer” craze and the nationwide panic that man will one day crossbreed a badger with a pig to seal the doom of civilisation, actually centering a game around the idea sounds like the biggest pile of garbage I ever heard.
In Microsoft’s announcement, we’re given details on what the company calls “an all-new socially minded global gaming competition”. Microsoft and Games for Change (G4C) are working together on the pointless initiative of “social change” by challenging students around the world to develop the best global warming game EVER using the XNA Express development software. In addition to cash prizes, contestants will also have a chance to earn their game a spot on Xbox Live, as well as the opportunity to go to Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business as part of an intern program.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, get busy inventing a game where you kill the Sun.
